Cecil B. DeMille's first postwar production, the $5 million Technicolor historical spectacular Unconquered lacks only the kitchen sink. The story begins in England in the 1760s, as Abigail Martha Hale (Paulette Goddard), unjustly accused of a crime against the Crown, is sentenced by the Lord Chief Justice (C. Aubrey Smith) to 14 years' forced ...
Samson and Delilah is Cecil B. DeMille's characteristically expansive retelling of the events found in the Old Testament passages of Judges 13-16. Victor Mature plays Samson, the superstrong young Danite. Samson aspires to marry Philistine noblewoman Semadar (Angela Lansbury), but she is killed when her people attack Samson as a blood enemy. ...
Cecil B. DeMille takes us back to the 1860s, then rebuilds the first intercontinental railroad in Union Pacific. The real-life spectacle is occasionally interrupted by the fictional adventures of railroad overseer Joel McCrea, postmistress Barbara Stanwyck (with an incredible Irish brogue), and McCrea's best pal Robert Preston. Unfortunately ...
The genesis of The Story of Dr. Wassell is said to have been a story told by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to director Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper stars as Corydon M. Wassell, a real-life country doctor from Arkansas who worked as a medical missionary in China in the years prior to WWII. When America enters the war, Dr. Wassell joins the ...
Based on the Holy Scriptures, with additional dialogue by several other hands, The Ten Commandments was the last film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The story relates the life of Moses, from the time he was discovered in the bullrushes as an infant by the pharoah's daughter, to his long, hard struggle to free the Hebrews from their slavery at the ...
Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor historical spectacle Reap the Wild Wind was to have starred Gary Cooper, but Cooper's prior commitment to Goldwyn's Pride of the Yankees compelled DeMille to recast the leading role with John Wayne. The film, set in the mid-19th century, centers around Key West, Florida, where piracy reigns unchecked. Wayne plays ...
Don't let that title fool you: Male and Female is really James M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, as interpreted by Cecil B. DeMille. Thomas Meighan plays Crichton, the very proper butler in the British household of Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts). When masters and servants go on a yachting excursion, the vessel is destroyed in a storm, marooning ...
Having scored big-time box office with his first Biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), Cecil B. DeMille hoped to top this success with his 1927 The King of Kings. Inasmuch as he was now dealing with the life of Christ, DeMille had to be careful to serve up equal amounts of showmanship and reverence. The first creative challenge: how to ...
Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is a lavish tribute to circuses, featuring three intertwining plotlines concerning romance and rivalry beneath the big top. DeMille's film includes spectacular action sequences, including a show-stopping train wreck. The Greatest Show on Earth won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Story. ~ ...
Film historian William K. Everson once observed that the secret to the success of Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 Cleopatra is that DeMille subtly reshaped the known historical events into a contemporary "gold-digger makes good" scenario. Exhibiting the same determination with which Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way to the top in 1933's Baby Face, Queen ...
Even though Paramount already had a production of Carmen in the works, producer William Fox forged right ahead with his own, starring Theda Bara as the hot-blooded cigarette girl. Fox risked having his film pale in comparison to the other, which had Cecil B. DeMille directing, and opera diva Geraldine Farrar in her screen debut. But he brought in ...
A sweeping chronicle of the life and death of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orlean, this epic stands as one of director Cecil B. DeMille's finest works and offers film buffs a fascinating look into the early years of one of Hollywood's greats. The story of the valiant French martyr is framed by the modern tale of a British soldier who, while fighting ...
Cecil B. DeMille's much-maligned cinemadaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's The Affairs of Anatol holds up better than its reputation suggests. Wallace Reid stars as New York socialite Anatol DeWitt Spencer, who after only a few day's marriage has become bored with his new bride Vivian (Gloria Swanson). In search of new romantic vistas, Anatole takes ...
Cecil B. DeMille's first screen version of The Ten Commandments is only peripherally a Biblical story. The film's first 45 minutes recaps the struggle between Moses (Theodore Roberts) and Rameses (Charles de Roche) over the liberation of the Hebrews. Only after the Lord has imposed a series of plagues upon Egypt does Rameses relent and permit the ...
Cecil B. DeMille made The Squaw Man three times; this silent version was the second one. While the 1914 Squaw Man bears more historical significance (as it went a long way in establishing Hollywood as the heart of the film industry), this 1918 version is, by far, the better film, with higher production values and a more sophisticated approach. To ...
This was Gloria Swanson's first film for director Cecil B. DeMille and it went a long way in establishing her as a star. Considered deliciously racy in its day, Don't Change Your Husband is an amusing battle between the sexes that takes place in the sumptuous upper-class society of the post-WWI era. The romantic Leila Porter (Gloria Swanson) is ...
The Cheat was the picture that "made" the reputation of director Cecil B. DeMille. Broadway star Fannie Ward plays an irresponsible socialite who uses the charity funds entrusted to her to play the stock market. When she loses the money, Ward is afraid to tell her husband Jack Dean, so she arranges to borrow $10,000 from wealthy oriental Sessue ...
Director Cecil B. DeMille returned to Paramount Pictures for this typically epic production, which became his first box office hit after the close of the silent era. Fredric March stars as Roman Prefect Marcus Superbus, a noble military leader of the year 64 A.D. Emperor Nero (Charles Laughton) has just burned down the city and blamed the ...
The second of Cecil B. DeMille's talkies (as well as his second for MGM), Madam Satan is an exercise in incoherence, but this doesn't detract one iota from its entertainment value. Kay Johnson plays the sedate wife of philandering Reginald Denny, who is currently carrying on with "jazz baby" Lillian Roth. In a desperate effort to win back her ...
The first of Cecil B. DeMille's series of sophisticated romantic comedy-dramas, Old Wives for New was adapted from a novel by David Graham. Elliot Dexter stars as David Murdock, who after several years of marriage has grown as tired of his wife Sophy as she has of him. Casting about for new female companionship, David falls for lovely Juliet ...
The Whispering Chorus was arguably the closest Cecil B. DeMille ever came to making an "art" picture. Stalwart DeMille supporting player Raymond Hatton gave the performance of his career as embezzling bank clerk John Trimble. Hoping to escape punishment for his crimes, Trimble arranges for an anonymous, mutilated corpse to be identified as his own ...
One is immediately aware that The Plainsman is a Cecil B. DeMille production in the opening scene, wherein President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.), on the verge of signing crucial legislation which will determine the future of the American West, is dragged away from his Cabinet by a scolding Mrs. Lincoln (Leila McIntyre), who informs her ...
It would be easy to assume that combining Mary Pickford's charm with director Cecil B. DeMille's penchant for the spectacular would create an exceptional piece of work. But judging from this picture, and the one made before it -- Romance of the Redwoods -- that just wasn't the case. The bottom line was that both Pickford and DeMille wanted control ...
One of the best of Cecil B. DeMille's sophisticated sex comedies of the silent era, Why Change Your Wife? hinges upon a marriage of opposites. Husband Thomas Meighan has a fondness for wine, women and song; wife Gloria Swanson is the intellectual bookish type (we know this much because she wears thick glasses). When jazz baby Bebe Daniels enters ...
Cecil B. DeMille's century-hopping extravaganza The Road to Yesterday begins in the present (1925, that is). Wealthy Joseph Schildkraut can't understand why his wife Jetta Goudal is so cold to him. Goudal senses that Schildkraut had once done her dirt....in a previous life. Likewise unhappily married are William Boyd and Vera Reynolds. All four ...
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